Massachusetts

Cooley Dickinson Hospital Technical Workers Join 1199SEIU

Cooley Dickinson Hospital
Technical Workers Join 1199SEIU

About 100 technical workers win voice for
quality care and good jobs by joining state’s largest and fastest growing
healthcare union

Northampton, MA (August 11, 2017) – Technical workers at
Cooley Dickinson Hospital voted to join 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers
East, the largest and fastest growing healthcare union in Massachusetts. Cooley
Dickinson Hospital is located in Northampton and is part of Partners
HealthCare.

The unit
of about 100 technical workers includes medical lab technicians, CV techs and
respiratory therapists.

“I believe that joining 1199SEIU is important to help technical
employees like me respond to changes in the healthcare industry and advocate to
protect our professional standards,” said Suzanne Sauer, a CV Interventional
Tech at Cooley Dickinson Hospital for ten years.

"We’re proud that technical workers at Cooley Dickinson
Hospital joined together and now have the opportunity to utilize their collective
voice to advocate for quality care and quality jobs to benefit patients and
communities throughout the region,” said Tyrék D. Lee, Sr., Executive Vice
President of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. “We’re pleased to welcome our
new Cooley Dickinson sisters and brothers into our 1199SEIU family. We look
forward to working together to provide quality care and ensure that all workers
have access to good jobs, fair wages and a voice in the workplace.”

The
service and technical workers at Cooley Dickinson Hospital participated in a
free and fair election process that began on May 15 and allowed workers to make their own
decisions about whether or not to join 1199SEIU. The units voted in separate,
secret-ballot elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board.

About
300 service workers also voted to join 1199SEIU. The result of the technical
unit’s vote was determined following the resolution of ballot challenges.

The
Cooley Dickinson Hospital service workers are among hundreds of additional
healthcare workers who recently voted to join 56,000 1199SEIU members in
Massachusetts and over 400,000 members on the East Coast.

In
March, approximately 500 service workers at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner
Hospital in Boston, also a Partners HealthCare facility, and 80 technical
workers at Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, part of the Steward Health
Care System, joined 1199SEIU. Over 40 workers at Brockton Visiting Nurses
Association joined 1199SEIU in October 2016, and over 200 workers at Medical
Resources, a private home care agency based in Newton, voted to join the union
in May 2015.

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Representing more than 56,000 healthcare workers throughout
Massachusetts and over 400,000 workers on the East Coast, 1199SEIU United
Healthcare Workers East is the largest and fastest-growing healthcare union
in America. Our mission is to achieve affordable, high quality healthcare for
all. 1199SEIU is part of the 2.1 million member Service Employees International
Union.